The Darkness that Comes Before (57 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before

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On the ninth day of their journey, they awoke to woollen skies. It began to rain.

On the Steppe the rain seemed endless. Grey encompassed every distance until it seemed they travelled through a void. The northerner turned to him, his eyes lost in the hollows beneath his brows. Tails of wet hair curled into his beard, framing his narrow face.

“Tell me,” Kellhus said, “about Shimeh.”

Pressing, always pressing.

Shimeh . . . Does Moënghus truly dwell there?

“It’s holy to the Inrithi,” Cnaiür replied, keeping his head bowed against the rain, “but possessed by the Fanim.” He did not bother to raise his voice over the dreary roar: he knew the man would hear him.

“How did this happen?”

Cnaiür weighed these words carefully, as though tasting them for poison. He’d resolved to ration what he would and would not say about the Three Seas to the Dûnyain. Who knew what weapons the man might fashion?

“The Fanim,” he replied warily, “have made it their mission to destroy the Tusk in Sumna. They’ve warred for many years against the Empire. Shimeh is but one of many prizes.”

“Do you know these Fanim well?”

“Well enough. Eight years ago I led the Utemot against them at Zirkirta, far to the south of here.”

The Dûnyain nodded. “Your wives told me you were unconquered on the field of battle.”

Anissi? Did you tell him this?
He could see her betraying him in innumerable ways, thinking she spoke in his interest. Cnaiür turned his face away, watched the grasses resolve from the grey. Such comments, he knew, were simply plays on his vanity. He no longer responded to anything remotely intimate.

Kellhus returned to his earlier tack. “You said the Fanim seek to destroy the Tusk. What is the Tusk?”

The question shocked Cnaiür. Even the most ignorant of his cousins knew of the Tusk. Perhaps he simply tested his answers against those of others.

“The first scripture of Men,” he said to the rain. “There was a time, before the birth of Lokung, when even the People were bound by the Tusk.”

“Your God was born?”

“Yes. A long time ago. It was our God who laid waste to the northern lands and gave them to the Sranc.” He tipped his head back and, for a moment, savoured the break of cold water across his forehead and face. It tasted sweet on his lips. He could feel the Dûnyain watching, scrutinizing his profile.
What do you see?

“What of the Fanim?” Kellhus asked.

“What of them?”

“Will they hinder our passage through their land?”

Cnaiür suppressed the urge to look at the man. Either intentionally or inadvertently, Kellhus had struck upon an issue that had troubled him ever since he’d resolved to undertake this quest. That day—so long ago, it now seemed—hiding among the dead at Kiyuth, Cnaiür had heard Ikurei Conphas speak of an Inrithi Holy War. But a Holy War against whom? The Schools or the Fanim?

Cnaiür had chosen their path carefully. He intended to cross the Hethanta Mountains into the Empire, even though a lone Scylvendi could not expect to live long among the Nansur. It would have been better to avoid the Empire altogether, to travel due south to the headwaters of the River Sempis, which they could have followed directly into Shigek, the northernmost governorate of Kian. From there they simply could have followed the traditional pilgrimage routes to Shimeh. The Fanim were rumoured to be surprisingly tolerant of pilgrims. But if the Inrithi were in fact mounting a Holy War against Kian, this route would have proven disastrous. For Kellhus especially, with his fair hair and pale skin . . .

No. He needed, somehow, to learn more about this Holy War before striking true south, and the nearer they travelled to the Empire, the greater the probability of happening across that intelligence became. If the Inrithi didn’t wage Holy War against the Fanim, they could skirt the edges of the Empire and reach Fanim lands unscathed. If they did wage Holy War, however, they would likely be forced to cross the Nansurium—a prospect that Cnaiür dreaded.

“The Fanim are a warlike people,” Cnaiür finally replied, using the rain as a weak excuse not to look at the man. “But I’m told that they’re tolerant of pilgrims.”

He took care not to glance or to speak to Kellhus for some time after, though something inner grimaced all the while. The more he avoided looking at the man, the more dreadful he seemed to become. The more godlike.

What do you see?

Cnaiür pinched images of Bannut from his eyes.

The rain lasted another day before trailing into a drizzle that veiled far-away slopes with sheets of mist. Another day passed before their wool and leather dried.

Not long after, Cnaiür became obsessed with the thought of murdering the Dûnyain in his sleep. They’d been discussing sorcery, far and away the most frequent theme of their rare discussions. The Dûnyain continually returned to the subject, even telling Cnaiür of a defeat he’d suffered at the hands of a Nonman warrior-magi far to the north. At first Cnaiür assumed this preoccupation stemmed from some fear on the man’s part, as though sorcery were the one thing his dogma could not digest. But then it occurred to him that Kellhus
knew
he thought talk of sorcery harmless and so used it to broach the silence in the hope of steering him toward more useful topics. Even the story of the Nonman, Cnaiür realized, was likely another lie—a false confession meant to draw him into an exchange of confessions.

After recognizing this latest treachery, he unaccountably thought:
When he falls asleep . . . I’ll kill him tonight when he falls asleep
.

And he continued to think this, even though he knew he could not murder the man. He knew only that Moënghus had summoned Kellhus to Shimeh—nothing more. It was unlikely he would ever find him without Kellhus.

Regardless, the following night he slipped from his blankets and crept across the cold turf with his broadsword. He paused next to the embers of their fire, staring at the man’s inert form. Even breaths. His face as calm at night as it was impassive by day. Was he awake?

What manner of man are you?

Like a bored child, Cnaiür combed the tips of the surrounding grass with his sword’s edge, watching the stalks bend then spring upright in the moonlight.

Scenarios flashed through his soul’s eye: his strike stilled by Kellhus’s bare palms; his strike stilled by the treachery of his own hand, Kellhus’s eyes popping open, and a voice from nowhere saying,
“I know you, Scylvendi . . . better than any lover, any God.”

He crouched, poised over the man for what seemed a long while. Then, seized by paroxysms of self-doubt and fury, he crawled back to his blankets. He shivered for a long time, as though cold.

Over the next two weeks the great tablelands of the Jiünati interior gradually transformed into a jumble of broken inclines. The ground became loamy, and the grasses surged to sweep the flanks of their horses. Bees scribbled across the near distances, and great clouds of gnats assailed them when they splattered across stagnant waters. With each day, however, the season seemed to retreat. The ground became more stony, the grasses shorter and paler, and the insects more lethargic.

“We’re climbing,” Kellhus noted.

Even though the terrain had alerted Cnaiür to their approach, Kellhus glimpsed the Hethanta Mountains across the horizon first. As always when sighting the mountains, Cnaiür could feel the Empire on the far side, a labyrinth of luxuriant gardens, sprawling fields, and ancient, hoary cities. In the past, the Nansurium had been the destination of his tribe’s seasonal pilgrimages, a place of shouting men, burning villas, and shrieking women. A place of retribution and worship. But this time, Cnaiür realized, the Empire would be an obstacle—perhaps an insurmountable one. They had encountered no one who knew of the Holy War, and it looked as though they would be forced to cross the Hethantas and enter the Empire.

When he sighted the first yaksh in the distance, he was heartened far more than was manly. As far as he could tell, they rode through Akkunihor land. If anyone knew whether the Empire waged holy war against Kian, it would be the Akkunihor, who were the sieve through which a great many pilgrimages passed. Without a word he yanked his horse toward the encampment.

Kellhus was the first to see that something was amiss.

“This camp,” he said tonelessly, “is dead.”

The Dûnyain was right, Cnaiür realized. He could see several dozen yaksh, but no people and, more significantly, no livestock. The pasture they rode over was uncropped. And the encampment itself had the empty, dried-out look of abandoned things.

His elation faded into disgust. No plain men. No plain talk. No escape.

“What happened?” Kellhus asked.

Cnaiür spat across the grasses. He knew what had happened. After the disaster at Kiyuth, the Nansur had ranged all across this land. Some detachment had come across this camp and butchered or enslaved everyone. Akkunihor. Xunnurit had been Akkunihor. Perhaps his whole tribe had been obliterated.

“Ikurei Conphas,” Cnaiür said, faintly shocked by how unimportant that name had become to him. “The Emperor’s nephew did this.”

“How can you be sure?” Kellhus asked. “Perhaps the inhabitants no longer needed this place.”

Cnaiür shrugged, knowing this was not the case. Though places on the Steppe could be discarded, things could not be—not by the People, at least. Everything was needed.

Then, with unaccountable certainty, he realized that Kellhus would kill him.

The mountains were looming, and the Steppe swept out behind them.
Behind
them. The son of Moënghus no longer needed him.

He’ll kill me while I sleep.

No. Such a thing could not happen. Not after travelling so far, after enduring so much! He must use the son to find the father. It was the only way!

“We must cross the Hethantas,” he declared, pretending to survey the desolate yaksh.

“They look formidable,” Kellhus replied.

“They are . . . But I know the shortest way.”

That night they camped among the abandoned yaksh. Cnaiür rebuffed Kellhus’s every attempt to draw him into conversation, listening instead to the howl of mountain wolves on the wind and jerking his head to the click and creak of the empty yaksh about them.

He had struck a bargain with the Dûnyain: freedom and safe passage across the Steppe in return for his father’s life. Now, with the Steppe almost behind them, it seemed he had always known the bargain was a sham. How could he
not?
Was not Kellhus the son of Moënghus?

And why had he decided to cross the mountains? Was it truly to discover whether the Empire was embroiled in a holy war, or was it to draw out the lie he had been chasing?

Use the son. Use a
Dûnyain . . .

Such a fool!

He did not sleep that night. Neither did the wolves. Before dawn he crept into the pitch black of a yaksh and huddled among weeds. He found an infant’s skull and wept, screamed at the bindings, at the wood, at the hide surfaces; he beat his fists against the treacherous earth beneath.

The wolves laughed and wailed despicable names. Hateful names.

Afterward, he put his lips to the earth and breathed. He could feel
him
listening from somewhere out there. He could feel him knowing.

What did he see?

It did not matter. The fire burned and it had to be fed.

On lies if need be.

Because the fire burned true. The fire alone.

So cold against swollen eyes. The Steppe. The trackless Steppe.